Personalization Strategy
The brand equity is the consumer perception about the commercial value, they derive listening brand name of a specific service or product. In this study, the commercial value for the customer, observed for two companies will be considered. The two brands selected for the study was ‘Coles and Aldi,’ of Australia in retail supermarkets. The report includes brand equity of both the brands on four major learning theories that include marketing communication strategy, personalization strategy, brand architecture strategy, and leveraging strategy. This needs to evaluate and compare Coles and Aldi’s performances and observe which brand was successful and which was unsuccessful.
Coles Australia, that it is Australian supermarket, established in 1914 by GJ Coles and celebrated its 100th anniversary in April 2014. The premium image that a brand makes in the mind of the consumer is what built a brand image (coles, 2018).
Aldi supermarket was founded in 1913 as one of the most awarded and reputable retailers in the market internationally. Today, Aldi rapidly growing system has more than 10,000 stores, and it is serving millions of individuals across three continents (aldi, 2018).
Customers gradually presume a personalized and exclusive experience, which is completely tailored to browsing habits, interests, and customer’s brand loyalty level. A company attitude to personalization will progressively define the span of time one can derive from their customer base. An effective tactic to personalization can also be a significant driver in distinguishing the brand within the sector by giving truly abundant user experiences. A personalization strategy is beneficial for organizations that have storage of customer data and aptitude that could be connected to the progress of the relevancy and effectiveness of digital client communications (Hayran, 2016).
Personalization strategy of Coles includes online store besides emails, where people have their personal accounts, which they can log in password protected (shop.coles, 2018). Moreover, the financial services area is also actively striving for personalization. To improve customer experience Coles have aggregated data across the business and simplification is head of the digital experience (Cameron, 2017). Coles is not only focusing on email marketing to enhance personalization but even other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube are also targeted aggressively to increase customer database and increase brand name.
The personalization strategy of Aldi supermarkets includes majorly on email marketing, this company also consists of online shopping with a very simple homepage, but the major focus of the company was through email but one of the negative aspects of this company is the mistakes it committed at the time of making SEO, Google’s algorithm (digitalstrategyconsulting, 2018).
Analysis
This strategy results out to be key to success for Coles as this strategy leads to the community feel among the customer and ease of online shopping also increases sale for Coles. In today’s world, the customer needs user-friendly websites, ease of payment, and timely delivery, which Coles is fulfilled largely. For Aldi, the strategy was not too effective in building up brand equity as the focus remains on email marketing, which is not always attractive for the customers; in fact, email advertisement sometimes can be annoying if done more rapidly.
Marketing communication strategy is an effective tool for enhancing brand equity. It is important for customers to be aware of the brand, its products, services and new products launching in the market. This includes passing on the message to the public through various marketing tools to promote the brand, and its products and eventually increasing the sale of the company (Reid, 2015).
Major marketing communication tools employed by Coles are:
- Radio and television advertisements,
- Print advertisements at buses, magazines, newspaper, and bus stops,
- Endorsements of famous brand ambassador,
- Placement of product and brand during television shows that are popular like my kitchen, and master chef.
- Promotional flyers and materials(mbaskool, 2018)
One of the popular marketing strategies found was Cole’s magazine for recipes and tips. One was ‘Coles, the taste of spring,’ which one can also download from the website (coles, 2018). Another most famous communication strategy includes through audio-visuals at youtube.com with the title of ‘At homes with Coles,’ it was also done to enhance brand image and popularity.
One of the Coles campaigns that feature local growers and group people from Mildura in the region of Victorian, which aims to “showcase the great quality Australian fresh produce available from Coles.” It makes understanding the importance of quality of fresh food for the customers; the real farmers were used for this campaign. ‘Curtis Stone,’ who is a successful and recognized chef of Australia and restaurateur, became the face of the brand as “Fresh advisor and ambassador.” He has rejuvenated Coles and has given the amazing new product to the consumers. A webpage named “This week’s fresh specials- food & veg,” on the site, where according to customer pin code the specials vary and offers are available according to the area (coles, 2018). I have attached the screenshot here.
The marketing communication strategy of Aldi, which includes the major focus of the company, was of promotions to create awareness about the brand, products, and services to the customers. For this, the company, below the line promotion and line promotion, made two ways of promotions. The first method, that was above the line promotion includes paid promotions that focusing to attract a large number of audience at a time using various advertising tools like television, radio, newspapers. The main message they were communicating was the low-cost production of the company without compromising on product quality, and complete information of the newly launched products was communicated through printed pamphlets. Special discounts of that particular month were also promoted by distributing printed leaflets to attract a potential audience. One of the attractive strategies of Aldi was ‘swap and save message’ strategy through the newspaper to create awareness about the providing services among the consumers (McElny, 2018).
Outcomes or Action
The marketing strategy of Coles results in, until the date; there are more than 70K subscribers of the channel named Coles. New product launch by Curtis, result, the response to be very positive from the targeted audience, it was very innovative ideas and must be a very effective way to create a positive image of the brand in the customer’s eyes. It was observed that the strategies of Aldi supermarket were not too attractive when compared to the Coles. It does not result in a much positive reaction of people towards the brand (McElny, 2018).
Businesses that build brand equity exploit on very strong brands by utilizing them to explore new products in different categories or attending another customer segment in the same group, or the same customers are served in the same category but with an improvised way. The main objective of using the existing brand name is to take value advantage and use the power that the brand contains, instead of building an entirely new brand that could entail a vast expenditure and will take a long time (Zhang, 2015).
Coles leveraging strategy to increase brand equity consists of, Investment in grocery leads to a challenging market, but the amount saved in operational leverage have placed back into this business in the future. Share in grocery charges was stronger, which had determined the largest price gap between competitor Woolworths and Coles since Wesfarmers took the chain. ‘fresh’ was an essential floorboard of the Coles development strategy and 20% of Coles stores were already for produce on same-day delivery as the supermarket chain mechanism to increase the quality of its product range (Low.C, 2018). The shelf price was cut down by thirty-five percent of around thirty bread ranges and baked products in order to increase its price competitiveness and building leadership in fresh food (Mitchell, 2018).
Aldi’s leveraging strategy to enhance its brand equity involves line extensions; Aldi launches different range of goods like garden furniture, household equipment’s, kitchen equipment, and bathroom accessories. The products introduced are other than usual items of grocery in the stores considering availability. Such products are not permanent and are limited in stock. To enhance the excitement among the customers pesters of the product ranges are available in stores for next week. Another strategy that was adopted by Aldi was limiting the product selection that allow chain to keep low prices while focusing on quality (Wells, 2018).
Coles’ strong performance contrasts sharply with rival Woolworths and its battle to restore its brand and win back market share. According to Broker Citi, Wesfarmers’ half-year outcome exhibited that Coles was winning faster rate market share than its competitors in spite of 1.2% food price rises over the half (Low.C, 2018). The Coles needs to quicken its share in in-store “scratch” bakeries that will boost shopping rate of recurrence and surge the scope of the average shopping basket, where consumers can add sandwich ingredients like cheese, salad, and meat (Mitchell, 2018). The recommendation to Cole would be leverage strategy of leveraging new category that is extendable equity.
Marketing Communication Strategy
Aldi strategy of non-permanent new product launch, due to affordability and scarcity of the products, the customers can also gain a high deal of excitement. Moreover, the strategy of limiting products leads to generating a sense of urgency among its targeted customers and an increase in the sale (Wells, 2018). These strategies of Aldi impressive, but do not lead to much growth because there are many competitors in such regards of prices lowering like Walmart, a competitor enters with synergy strategy was ‘Lidi’ that affects the Aldi’s sales and success (brickmeetsclick, 2018). The Aldi must launch a new product in the existing category in such strategies.
This section will concentrate on brand architecture, which is a relational, strategic, and logical structure for the brand. In other words, the brand architecture includes the ‘family tree’ of the entity’s brand, followed by sub-brands, and its products. All the components of the brand are set on brand architecture foundation, and align the personality traits of the brand, brand messaging, brand story, brand promise, operational and visual requirements, and brand means into a unified structure. At times, the brand is based on the owner emotions; therefore, brand architecture avoids some specific emotions that may be built into one’s brand (Hsu, 2016).
Coles brand architecture strategy; the brand had an existing propensity for the space demonstrated by their decision to sell meat only that is not concerning hormone growth promotants. This includes the decision to pork removal produced using sow stalls from the shelves. A wide range of natural products is being offered, concerning with the technique of producing from an animal welfare, farming perspective, and chemicals. Mechanizing these products in a compelling manner that would let them claim wide-open space and increasing consumer relevancy (trulydeeply, 2018).
Aldi brand architecture strategy includes rebrands to differentiate. The logo is an evolution, where the designers over the world will disappoint, an instant Google search would provide many bellyaching, but it was not the aesthetic advantage of the mark, instead, it is the aptness for the public. The brand that presents Aldi main strength is bucking convention. Yet again, the brand decided to distinguish or differentiate and which is more valuable to Aldi then aesthetics (trulydeeply, 2018).
Building propositions around the Natural Food Purveyors could be a little challenging for a team of Coles but they require something purposeful and bold if they wish to claim a meaningful and relevant proposition, which will connect customers at a more emotive level (trulydeeply, 2018).
Aldi strategy to rebrand brings strategy to resonate and life with target audiences. Since the brand does not do, tasks in the way the market expect Aldi to di so that leads to their rebrand, which gives the audience the expected (trulydeeply, 2018).
Conclusion
From the above discussion we can conclude that, the brand equity of the two brands Coles, and Aldi considering four strategies that are marketing communication strategy, personalization strategy, brand architecture strategy, and leverage strategy were build. The Coles Australia, brand equity was built very effectively and strongly when compared to Aldi supermarket. Aldi was not so successful in building up strong brand equity.
References
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